Short answer: Private Internet Access is the configurable budget option, sixth in our ranking. It has apps for every desktop and mobile platform, it allows torrenting across its network, and on a long plan it costs very little. Two things to weigh first: it is a United States company, and it belongs to Kape Technologies, the same owner as ExpressVPN and CyberGhost.
The facts, and where they come from
Everything in this table is what Private Internet Access published on its own site on 6 September 2026, with the page we read it on. Where a detail was not stated there, the table says so rather than filling the gap from somewhere else. Prices were seen from Europe; they differ by country and change often, so treat the renewal price as the number that matters.
Entry price | Not shown without selecting a plan |
Money-back window | 30 days |
Simultaneous devices | Unlimited |
Free tier | No free tier |
Governing law | State of Colorado, United States (stated in its terms of service) |
Our ranking | #6 of 7 in our VPN ranking |
Checked on | 6 September 2026, privateinternetaccess.com |
A no-logs policy is deliberately absent from this table. Every provider here states one, so the statement itself separates nobody; what would separate them is an independent audit with a published scope and date, and that is discussed in the review rather than reduced to a tick.
Price and plans
On 6 September 2026, Private Internet Access advertised an entry price of not shown until a plan is selected, covering unlimited devices, with a money-back window of 30 days. Prices were seen from Europe and differ by country.
The purchase page we read did not display a price before choosing a plan, so we are not quoting one. Unlimited connections is stated on the same page.
Where support and the refund window sit in the account area.
The number that actually decides it
Not the entry price. Almost every VPN headline is a first-term price on a two- or three-year plan paid up front, and the subscription renews at a different rate. Before you commit, work out two figures: what leaves your account today, and what the same subscription costs in year two. A provider that is cheapest on the first number is regularly not cheapest on the second.
The renewal rate is published in the provider’s own terms and on the checkout page, and it is the one figure we will not reproduce here, because it changes and a stale number in a comparison table is worse than none. Read it where it is current, then decide.
How the plan options are laid out. Prices change - check the current page before you decide.
The money-back window is the other half of the price question. It is not a courtesy. It is the only trial you get, and it is long enough to find out whether the service is fast enough on your line and works with the things you bought it for. Use it in the first week, not on the last day.
Apps and platforms
On 6 September 2026, Private Internet Access listed apps or extensions for these platforms on its own download page:
Platform | How it runs |
|---|---|
Windows | Desktop or mobile app |
macOS | Desktop or mobile app |
Linux | Desktop or mobile app |
Android | Desktop or mobile app |
iOS | Desktop or mobile app |
Chrome | Browser extension |
Firefox | Browser extension |
Android TV | TV or console app |
Apple TV | TV or console app |
smart TVs | TV or console app |
Where the connect button, the location list and the settings sit in the desktop app.
The number of platforms matters less than whether the one you actually need is on it. The awkward cases are always the same three: a router, a television, and a work machine that will not let you install anything. A router install covers every device on the network at once, including the ones that have no app at all, and it counts as a single connection against your device limit, which is the reason it is worth the afternoon it costs to set up.
A browser extension is not the same product as the app. It routes that browser and nothing else: not your email client, not a game, not a second browser. It is a proxy with the provider’s name on it, and it is useful for exactly what it does.
The same controls on a phone: connect, choose a location, change settings.
Network and support
Network: 154 locations across 91 countries (privateinternetaccess.com/download, read on 6 September 2026). Support: 24/7 support.
Server counts are the most quoted and least useful number in this industry. A larger network mostly means more places to land and less crowding at peak times; it says nothing about whether the route to you is fast. What is worth checking is whether the provider has servers in the specific country you need. A network of thousands is no help if none of them sit where your bank, your broadcaster or your employer expects you to be.
How the location picker is organised. The list is shortened for the illustration.
Support is easier to judge and gets judged less. The question is not whether live chat exists but whether a refund request goes through it without a fight. That is the one interaction most subscribers will have, and it happens inside the money-back window, which is another reason not to leave that window to its last day.
All seven side by side
Read from each provider’s own site on 6 September 2026. Entry prices are the advertised first-term rate seen from Europe and renew at a different rate; "not stated" means the detail was not on the pages we read, not that it does not exist.
Provider | Entry price | Devices | Refund | Governing law | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
€3.49 | 10 | 30 days | not stated | no | |
€2.49 | unlimited | 30 days | British Virgin Islands | no | |
$2.49 | unlimited | 30 days | not stated | no | |
€3.49 | 10 | 30 days | Switzerland | yes, no data cap | |
€2.49 | not stated | 30 days | British Virgin Islands | no | |
Private Internet Access | not shown | unlimited | 30 days | Colorado, USA | no |
€2.19 | 7 | 45 / 14 days | Romania | no |
Two columns carry more weight than they look. Governing law decides who can compel a provider and through what process. It does not tell you whether anything is kept, but it sets the ceiling on what any privacy promise can be worth. And refund is the only trial you get; CyberGhost’s 45 days applies to long plans only, with 14 on monthly.
What is deliberately not a column: server counts, speeds and no-logs ticks. Every provider here states a no-logs policy, so the column would read "yes" seven times and separate nobody. What separates them is whether an independent audit exists, what it covered and when it was published, and that belongs in the text, not in a tick box.
Privacy and logging
Private Internet Access states in its terms that the agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Colorado. It is a United States company, and it says so. Whether that matters depends entirely on what you are protecting against, and it is a more useful starting point than a provider that leaves the question unanswered.
Why the no-logs promise separates nobody
Private Internet Access states that it does not log what you do online. So does every other provider on our list, without exception. A sentence that appears on all seven sites cannot be the thing that tells them apart, which is why you will not find it as a tick in our comparison table.
An IP and DNS check tells you which address and resolver a site actually sees. The values shown are examples.
What would tell them apart is an independent audit, and the scope of that audit matters as much as whether one exists. "Audited" can mean a full review of the server infrastructure and the internal processes around it, or a narrow look at one desktop application. Those are not the same claim, and a comparison table that renders both as a green tick is worse than one that leaves the column out. Where we discuss an audit, we say what it covered and when it was published, or we say that we have not seen one. That rule is set out in our editorial policy.
What jurisdiction actually decides
It decides who can compel the provider to hand something over, and through what process. That is all. It does not tell you whether the provider keeps anything worth handing over, and a favourable jurisdiction on top of poor internal practice buys you very little. Read it as a ceiling on what any privacy promise can be worth rather than as the promise itself.
The practical version, for most people: your threat model is probably an untrusted network and an internet provider that logs, not a state actor with a court order. For that, every provider here is sufficient, and the jurisdiction question is a tie-breaker rather than a decision. If your threat model is genuinely the second one, a VPN is one layer of several and this page is not the whole answer.
Streaming and torrenting
This is what most people buy a VPN for, and it is where the whole industry is least reliable. We are not going to publish a table of ticks saying Private Internet Access works with Netflix, Hulu and the rest, because that table is out of date by the time anyone reads it.
Why it keeps changing
Streaming platforms actively identify and block addresses they associate with VPNs and data centres. A provider adds addresses, the platform blocks them, the provider rotates. That loop runs continuously, which means a route that works this morning can fail this evening, on the same server, from the same house. Nothing about that is unique to one provider.
What a streaming check looks like when you test a service yourself.
Private Internet Access advertises that it works with particular services. That is the company’s claim about its own product, and it is a reasonable claim to make; it is not a guarantee, and no provider can honestly offer one. Treat any specific promise about a named platform as a statement of intent.
How to find out for yourself, properly
Inside the money-back window, and in this order. Sign up, install the app, connect to the country whose catalogue you want, and open the service on the device you will actually use. A television behaves differently from a laptop, because a TV often ignores the VPN entirely unless the router is carrying it. Play something for a few minutes rather than checking that the page loads. Then try a second server in the same country, because one blocked address does not mean the provider is blocked.
Do that in the first week. It is the only test that answers your question, and it is the reason the refund window matters more than any feature list.
Torrenting
Private Internet Access allows peer-to-peer traffic across its network, which is one of the reasons it keeps a following among heavier users. Two things are worth separating here. A VPN hides the traffic from the network you are on and hides your IP address from the peers you connect to. It does not make the activity legal where it is not, and it does not make you anonymous. The account you are signed into and the fingerprint of your device are untouched by it.
If this is your reason for subscribing, the feature that matters is the kill switch: it cuts the connection when the tunnel drops, instead of quietly letting traffic out over your ordinary line. Check that it is on before the first download, not after.
Getting started, and what to check in the first week
The money-back window is a deadline, not a cushion. Everything below fits inside it comfortably if you do it in the first few days, and none of it is worth doing on the last one.
Day one: install it where it actually matters
Start with the device you were thinking of when you bought it. If that is a laptop, install the Private Internet Access desktop app rather than the browser extension. The extension covers that browser and nothing else, which is a different product on the same subscription. If it is a phone, install it there first, because a phone joins networks you do not control far more often than a laptop does.
What a before-and-after speed test looks like. The figures are examples, not our measurements.
Then turn on the kill switch before you do anything else. It cuts your connection when the tunnel drops instead of quietly letting traffic out over your ordinary line, and it is off by default more often than it should be.
Day two: test the thing you bought it for
Not a speed test. Connect to the country you need and use the actual service, play a few minutes of video, log into the account, open the site that was blocked. A page that loads is not the same as a service that works, and streaming platforms in particular will let you reach the home screen and then refuse to play.
If it fails, try a second server in the same country before concluding anything. One blocked address is not a blocked provider, and this is the single most common reason people ask for a refund they did not need.
Day three: the awkward devices
Televisions, games consoles and anything else with no app of its own. The answer for all of them is the router: install once there and every device on the network is covered, counting as a single connection against your device limit. It costs an afternoon and it is the only route that covers hardware the provider has never heard of.
Before the window closes
Decide, and if the answer is no, ask for the refund while you still can. The request goes through support, and how that interaction goes is the one thing about a provider that almost nobody tests before subscribing and almost everybody experiences at some point.
Features worth knowing
PIA gives you more control than most, which is either its best quality or its worst depending on how much you want to configure.
Secure kill switch: blocks traffic outside the tunnel, and can be set to block it even when the app is closed.
Advanced split tunnelling: per-app and per-IP rules, more granular than most rivals offer.
MultiHop: routes through a second server or a proxy before the exit point.
MACE: DNS-level blocking of ad, tracker and malware domains.
InBrowser: a separate browser that discards its session when you close it.
Open-source apps: PIA publishes its client source, which is rare in this market and lets anyone check what the app does.
The kill switch and auto-connect live in the connection settings.
Ownership, jurisdiction and the audit
Three facts belong together here, because they pull in different directions.
PIA is based in the United States, a founding member of the Five Eyes arrangement. There is no US law compelling a VPN to retain user data, and PIA states it keeps none, but it remains subject to US court orders, and that is a real difference from a Swiss or Panamanian provider.
PIA was acquired by Kape Technologies in 2019. Kape also owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Zenmate. Kape was previously Crossrider, an advertising-technology company whose platform was abused to distribute malware before it was shut down in 2016. That history is a decade old and the company is not the same one, but it is the reason some readers rule out every Kape-owned provider on principle. We do not, and we understand why others do.
In 2022 Deloitte Romania audited PIA's no-logs claim and reported finding no stored user activity. An audit is a snapshot taken by people the company hired, not a guarantee about tomorrow, but a provider that submits to one and publishes the result is doing more than a provider that only asserts.
Set against that: RAM-only servers, anonymous payment options and published source code. Our conclusion is that PIA's engineering choices are stronger than its jurisdiction, and where you land depends on which of the two you weight more heavily.
The verdict
Choose Private Internet Access if you want deep configuration at a low long-term price, and the United States jurisdiction does not trouble you.
Look elsewhere if jurisdiction is the whole point of buying a VPN. Proton VPN in Switzerland is the more coherent choice.
It says plainly that it is a US company governed by Colorado law. That candour is worth something, and it is also the reason some buyers will stop here.
Whatever you decide, the decision is provisional until you have run it on your own connection. Every provider on this list gives you a money-back window for that, and it is the only part of the buying process where you get a real answer instead of a claim. Use it in the first week: install it, run it on the connection you actually have, and test the things you bought it for.
Where Private Internet Access sits against the other six, and why, is set out on our ranking page. What our commercial agreements can and cannot influence is in the affiliate disclosure: placement yes, stated facts no.
What it does well
Unlimited simultaneous connections
154 locations across 91 countries, stated on its own download page
Allows peer-to-peer traffic across the network
States its jurisdiction plainly: governed by the laws of Colorado
What to weigh against it
A United States company, which is a genuine consideration for some buyers
The purchase page did not display a price before a plan was selected
Owned by Kape Technologies, alongside ExpressVPN and CyberGhost
How this compares with the others we rank
A review of one provider only tells you half of anything. These are the other six in our ranking, with the reason each one exists on the list:
NordVPN: the safe default and our number one.
Surfshark: the cheapest full-featured plan on our list.
IPVanish: the one for routers and manual configuration.
Proton VPN: the privacy-first choice, and the only real free tier.
ExpressVPN: the premium option, priced like one.
CyberGhost: the most forgiving for a first-time user.
The order comes from our review methodology, and what our commercial agreements can and cannot influence is set out in the affiliate disclosure. If you want the short version of how to choose between them, the buying guide sits under the table on the ranking page: jurisdiction, whether anyone independent has examined the logging policy, what you pay in year two, and the refund window as the only trial that means anything.
Further reading
When a site blocks your VPN: why shared addresses get refused.
Reaching another catalogue: what works and what fails.
VPN glossary: the vocabulary, from kill switch to split tunnelling.
VPN vs proxy: why a browser extension is the second of those two.
How we review: what evidence goes into these pages and what we refuse to measure.
Corrections: what we got wrong and when we fixed it.
Frequently asked questions
Is it a problem that Private Internet Access is a United States company?
It depends on what you are protecting against. Jurisdiction sets who can compel a provider and through what process, which is a genuine consideration. It says nothing on its own about whether the provider retains anything to compel. Decide how much weight that carries for you before the price does it for you.
Who owns Private Internet Access?
Kape Technologies, the same owner as ExpressVPN and CyberGhost. If you are comparing those three against each other as independent options, they are not. (Checked on kape.com, September 2026.)
Does Private Internet Access allow torrenting?
Yes, Private Internet Access permits peer-to-peer traffic across its network rather than confining it to a handful of servers, which is one of the reasons it keeps a following among heavier users.
Who should not choose Private Internet Access?
Anyone for whom the jurisdiction question is the whole point of buying a VPN. If that is you, Proton VPN in Switzerland is the more coherent choice.